Ben Trachten
Attorney, Trachten Law Firm LLC
Age: 47
Industry experience: 21 years
As a former chair of the New Haven Zoning Board of Appeals, Ben Trachten is well-versed in land-use regulations and how they shape development. In his current role as a real estate lawyer, Trachten represents many of the developers seeking approvals for multifamily projects in the Elm City, which is in the midst of a historic housing boom. More than 1,000 new units are scheduled for completion in 2024, but the new supply is only moderating strong increases in housing costs. Credit ratings agency Moody’s reported that New Haven had the nation’s highest effective revenue increase per unit in the first quarter, rising 1.5 percent to nearly $1,592 while occupancy rose 0.1 percent to 96.4 percent. Ben’s father, Murray Trachten, founded the New Haven law firm in 1964 and retired in 2019.
Q: How did your family’s background in real estate law influence your career path?
A: Real estate has always been in my life. My father was a real estate lawyer before I was born. The implosion of the housing market was about three years after I became a lawyer, and that kind of changed everything. A lot of the people in the market now were not in the market in 2004 and 2006, and saw what can happen overnight with your property losing half of its value. I really enjoyed my time on the zoning board and it was great, but surprising to see neighborhood opposition in some cases. You really see the disparity of resources between certain communities to oppose projects.
Q: What recent changes in New Haven zoning have had the biggest effects on multifamily housing production?
A: We have a relatively new inclusionary zoning ordinance where there’s only a couple of projects that have been approved through it. They’ll be coming online in the next year. It’s a great tool, but it’s not a solution. New Haven is divided into the “strong market” and the “core market,” the core market being the downtown and the strong market being the periphery of downtown. In the strong market, it’s 10 percent [income-restricted units] at 50 percent of area median income for 99 years, which is probably one of the most progressive inclusionary requirements in the country. Dropping down to 50 percent AMI is really a different population. What’s happening is people are utilizing it in ways nobody predicted: mostly through my [clients’] applications, it’s converting smaller houses, two- and three-families, into more dwelling units as-of-right because it also eliminates parking requirements.
The problem with the inclusionary zoning is that it incentivizes development in areas where the gap between the market rent and affordable rent is smaller, which means lower-rent areas where developers won’t take a massive hit compared to the downtown area, where the discrepancy between the affordable and market rents is thousands of dollars a month. We’re just going to see more densification and development of certain neighborhoods, which I don’t think was the main intent of the program. The intent of the program was to avoid gentrification of the downtown area. There is a segment of our population that the private developers can never develop housing for, and that’s the folks living off of disability and the people with no income or very low income. We really need to see investment from the housing authorities and the state of Connecticut into housing for that part of the market: the true low-income development, and that’s only done through a very small group of developers. It’s a very different model than private development, and it’s a problem when the government shifts the burden to develop that housing onto private developers. Most of the private development community doesn’t know how to recertify incomes and take in the required documentation, and then it brings up questions of enforcement. And that’s what we’re going to be exploring for the next 20 years.
Q: Is the inclusionary zoning making it harder for developers to obtain financing for new construction?
A: I don’t think it’s having much of an impact. The broader access to money for development: higher interest rates: it’s just affecting everybody across the board, but housing development is still viable even at these interest rates. They are not historically high when you take the long view.
Q: What type of zoning reforms would you like to see in New Haven?
A: New Haven’s next real opportunity is we have a whole bunch of light industrial zones. Multifamily housing has existed there for hundreds of years, but you can’t do new construction: it’s not permitted except in buildings of 50,000 square feet or more. This is what I see as the most viable areas for development, because most of the light industrial has left. The zoning allows conversions of mill and factory buildings, but a lot of those buildings have degraded to the point that they are not salvageable. We have a whole bunch of waterfront that could be absolutely beautiful and it’s own little sustainable community and mixed-use development. Some of that has been put in place for the Long Wharf area by the highway, but we have other areas where we could do the same thing.
Trachten’s Five Favorite Foods:
- New Haven Pepe’s Pizza with Foxon Park cherry soda
- New Haven Pizza with Libby’s Italian Ice
- Grilled Picanha with rock salt
- Atticus Market Kouign Amann Pastry with Breve Cappuccino
- Brisket, hot sauce, mac and cheese